Aircraft maintenance data typically results from monitoring and recording upward of eight thousand different aircraft parameters while an aircraft is in service. The aircraft maintenance data may be collected for individual parts, subsystems, or for entire systems, and is utilized by various applications for activities such as scheduling aircraft maintenance, providing insight into performance, and troubleshooting (prognostics). Often referred to as “vehicle health management,” or an onboard maintenance system (OMS), the collection and recording of aircraft maintenance data is typically centrally managed by an onboard software program that compiles, sorts, and distributes the aircraft maintenance data for use by one or more stakeholders.
Interested avionics stakeholders, such as suppliers of parts, vehicle fleet operators, original equipment manufacturers (OEM), and military and research personnel, are increasingly switching to portable devices to reap the benefits of quick turnaround and customizability. Decreasing costs and increasing reliability has also driven the proliferation of portable devices into a wide range of applications in various segments of the aerospace domain. Many existing aircraft applications are being transferred from traditional centrally managed aircraft maintenance platforms to a plurality of portable devices, causing interface and efficiency issues with existing centralized hardware; in particular, traditional methods for delivering aircraft maintenance application data from the centralized hardware/software to a plurality of portable devices is inefficient.
Consequently, an innovative method or system capable of preparing aircraft maintenance application data for retrieval by portable devices is desired. The desired method or system encompasses different components of the aircraft maintenance domain and meets the requirements of the multiple stakeholders. In addition, the desired method or system is capable of expansion to support future requirements.